Annakarinaland

2013-04-25

The 15th Udine Far East Film Festival opened on April 19th with a great lineup of films from Southeast Asia. The Udine festival is the largest portal of films from South East Asia in Europe, and many of the films come directly from their premiere in their country or make their international debut at Udine and this year is no exception

This festival has a success formula written all over it, even if it feels the crunch of the economy and has to be frugal. The Autumn edition of the highly regarded Oxford journal Screen wrote about the Udine recipe for success in "Counter programming and the Udine Far East Film Festival". The authors regard the festival as a high quality festival because of how it programs festival films from Asia. The authors maintain that although a film from Asia is presented at an A-list festival such as Berlin, Cannes and Venice, it gets attention primarily because it comes from Asia, not because the film is popular and given critical attention in the country of origin. The article also emphasizes that vendors at A - list festival markets are not as informed about the DVDs or films shown in the Asian market as Udine. Udine's special talent, as noted in "Screen", is selecting members for their program committee specialized in a particular country in South East Asia.

Udine chooses film after the South Korean Busan International Film Festival in October and in the interim before Cannes and Venice through special contacts from their festival committee. This makes it a special niche market for new Asian films. They also have a partnership with Busan and Venice Film Festival regarding these choices. The former head of the Venice Film Festival, Marco Muëller, is a European expert in Chinese literature so the Veneto region of which Udine and Venice became a fertile source for new films from Asia for the European and North American markets. Many films screened at Udine have not been shown before on the festival web.

The directors often come with their films to Udine and the festival has made directors such as John Woo, Johnny To,Tsui Hark, Takeshi Miike, and Miike Kitano known in Italy.

Screen points out that the Udine audience has become in fact good experts on films from Asia, which has been demonstrated through the DVD / book market at the festival where people can buy books on Asian cinema, and films that have been shown at previous festivals.

At the 65th Cannes (2012), a special "Thai Cinema Night" was arranged for Her Royal Highness Princess Ubolratana Rajakanya Sirivadhana Barnavadi, an established actress. There were many programmers and marketers interested in this event. Trailers from Thai films screened at Udine were present. An actress known in Udine, Penpak Sirikul ("It Gets Better" - 2012) was on the panel for the event and as well as director Tom Waller who made – “Mindfulness and Murder” from 2012. Most people who attended the event were not aware of these films, directors and actors, so the Udine portal is confirmed as an important threshold for Europe to see fresh films from Southeast Asia.

This year the European premiere of Ip Man The Final Fight closely follows its theatrical release in Hong Kong on March 28th The setting is in postwar Hong Kong, where the Wing Chun Grandmaster, Ip Man, teacher of Bruce Lee is challenged by rival kung fu styles and must fight one last time.

Anthony Wong Chau-Sang plays Ip Man and the film is directed by Herman Yau who did the first Ip Man, the legend is born.

This year there are also three wold premieres from Japan:

Maruyama, The Middle Schooler by Kudo Kankuro , Angel Home by Tsutsumi Yukihiko, and It's Me, It's Me by Miki Satoshi who guests the festival with super pop idol Kazuya Kamenashi otherwise known at Kame, a 27 year old Dancer, singer, actor, television personality,and radio host

Other highlights this year include A Story Of Yonosuke by Japanese director Okita Shuichi who made the brilliant Woodsman and the Rain (2011) about a film crew and young director who asks a woodman to stop sawing down trees in order to finish their shoot. The Bullet Vanishes, is a Chinese detective story set in the late nineteenth century directed by Derek Yee with an all-star cast including Lau Ching-wan and Nicholas Tse. There is also the Hong Kong action Cold War by Longman Leung and Sunny Luk, and Lost In Thailand by actor/director Xu Zheng, who holds a box office record for Chinese cinema in mainland China

This year Golden Mulberry for Lifetime Achievement goes to Kim Dong-ho, the South Korean director of the Busan Film Festival held in South Korea, which is called the "Cannes of the East".

Kim Dong-ho also presents a short film this year that was featured at the Berlin Film Festival about a jury who deliberates about the best films for a festival, a subject close to home.

2013-04-20

"We know from crisis communication research that people typically search for corroborating information before they take a corrective action—their TV tells them there's a tornado brewing and they talk to relatives and neighbors. And now they look at Twitter."Bill Braniff, Executive Director of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Response to Terrorism.

"I have been following my friend's Facebook who is near the scene and she is updating everyone before it even gets to the news".Email sent during Boston Marathon.

The way we get our news is changing. Paper newspapers are going digital. Digital subscriptions have forced newsprint to come up with inventive ways to package news. Nothing seems to last for long since it is impossible to compete with the immediacy of digital information. Even reading the entire paper in digital format is time consuming.

Twitter is becoming the news preference.

Marcus Messner, a communications professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, said the rash of mainstream media errors [of Boston Marathon bombing news coverage] stemmed at least in part from pressure to compete with fast-flowing social media.

"If you look at Twitter, the news snippets on the events are a lot more advanced than what you're seeing on websites or even what you're seeing on the air," Messner said. "Twitter, especially, has put a lot more pressure on news organization to get it out fast."

Social media is changing everything, that is the need for quick, cinematic messages that may or may not be accurate, information that can be skimmed in a heartbeat, and forgotten in a nano second. The paradigm shift awaits for the entire work force to adapt to the digital revolution. Standing with your pitchfork in protest as the agrarians did during the industrial revolution will not matter.The revolution IS digitalized and will continue.

The Boston Marathon is the oldest marathon in the world that began in 1897 as a patriot race. For the 117th race, over 23 thousand runners from 92 countries were suddenly paralyzed by two young Chechnyan men with homemade bombs and IEDs. Major gunfights in the neighborhoods of Boston put Watertown on curfew for a day. The two young men were discovered through surveillance cameras and personal digital images. The race and manhunt was relayed around the world through mediated images. The BBC reported from someone's apartment in Watertown hooked up on Skype. The primitive weapons of two sociopaths contrast strongly with the electronic and digital surveillance. This is definitely symbolic of living in a world of opposites.

The Boston bombings were real. They were also mediated. The entire world was on live feed as the manhunt began and there was enormous support everywhere. This event is symbolic of how we deal with a real event and how far reaching its grasp can become. As much as I am irritated by the power of two corporate social media empires that have enslaved young people and diminished personal contact, this has become part of the world we live in. In Sweden the major papers report EVERY DAY about who twittered what and almost EVERYONE in mass transport is on their EYEPHONE (iPhone) in a PC society. And here I am on Blogger because I want to connect my thoughts to this vortex of mediated images.....I am a part of it all too.

2013-04-10

The Créteil International Women’s Film Festival, which was held from March 22 to 31 honored veteran filmmakers and actresses who have attended previous festivals such as Margareta Von Trotta, Suzanne Osten, Mira Nair, Ulrike Ottinger, Agnes Varda, Carmen Maura, Maria Schneider and Anna Karina.

Jeanne Balifor

The guest of honor this year was Jeanne Balifor, an actress unknown outside of Europe who selects films that are noteworthy for their extraordinary themes. L´Age d´Ellen (Germany 2009), (The Age of Ellen) by the German director Pira Marais was screened for the occasion on Day 2 about a flight attendant (Jeanne Balifor) who decides to abandon her career after an incident in Africa when a leopard on the landing field is sedated by an animal rights activist.

Youth from the Créteil high schools and university are involved in the festival, documenting the festival on film teams, and the government supports the festival. During the year, the festival creates video workshops for them with selected themes and their films are screened in the Créteil Prefecture.

Nayat Valaud-Belkacem

The new “Minister of Women”, Nayat Valaud-Belkacem in François Hollandes cabinet, visited the festival on Day 3 and proclaimed how important the Créteil event was. “Even the Lumière Brothers had a sister”, she declared. In the festival catalogue, she was generous in supplying ample statistics defying the myth equality has been reached by women in France: “Five percent of classical concerts are directed by women; 90% of the national dramatic theatres are directed by men; 4% of operas are directed by women, and 13% of the technicians in cultural arena are women. For the world of cinema, it is the same”, wrote Valaud-Belkacem.

Créteil nevertheless devotes itself to “the privileged exhibition of film directors around the world; it has become over time the only professional event on a major international auteur cinema long discriminated against and poorly dispersed”. It is a festival supported by both the Ministry of Culture in France, and the Creteil borough. Director Jackie Buet has been with the festival since 1979.

An invitation to the “L’Étrange” or Strange Film Festival in Paris featured two films by French filmmaker Angélique Bosio.

The first was the world première of a documentary about a virtually unknown French designer– Fifi Chachnil. In Pretty en Rose (Pretty in Pink).Fifi is known for designing fashionable lingerie and attire for women and has worked with filmmakers such as the gay team of Pierre and Gilles. Bosio spend six years making the film which she also successfully crowdfunded in part.

Bosio’s “Llik your Idols” from 2007 was also screened about the Cinema of Transgression movement of the 80’s coined by the American Nick Zedd, films which were inexpensively underground films created for shock value, often having a humorous effect.

On the final evening of the festival was a special event called an ‘avant première’ of Margareta Von Trotta's biopic “Hannah Arendt”. Barbara Sukorow plays the German American political theorist. Arendt wrote several important books and also covered the trial of Eichmann as a reporter for the New Yorker. She was critical to how the trial was conducted and a large part of Von Trotta’s film treats this.

The international jury selected Hemel as the best feature film of Créteil festival this year.

Grand prix du JuryMeilleur long métrage fictionHemel by Sacha Polak (Netherlands 2012):
The story of a woman who is lost in a series of relationships and whose father soon becomes seriously interested in a new woman, which shakes Hemel’s foundation.

Honorable mention. Mention special. The Mirror Never Lies by Kamila Andini (Indonesia, 2011):
The story of an Indonesian mother Tayung and her 12-year-old daughter Pakis whose husband is missing at sea. The film is set in the Coral Triangle and portrays the lives of the Bajo people today

Public prize for feature film. Prix du PublicMeilleur long métrage fictionInch’Allah by Anaïs de Barbeau-Lavalette (Canada, 2012)
The story of Chloe, a young Canadian obstetrician working in a makeshift clinic in a Palestinian refugee camp of the West Bank.

Best feature, Jury Youth Prize. Prix du jury Graine de CinéphageSac de Farine (Sack of Flour), Kadija Leclere Tunisia, 2012): the story about a young girl in Belgium whose father one day arrives at her school to take her to live in Morocco. She grows up learning how to sew and knit rather than study math science and art. One day everything changes.

Créteil is clearly up to date, and defies the protocol of rival festivals with its special programming criteria. After 35 years the festival remains a maverick in the arena.

What made Funicello so endearing to the public was her wholesome and beautiful good looks, her demeanor, her ability to stand up to her boyfriends in her films, and her perpetual cheer in life. She lived her life almost as the person in her films, sticking up for herself, helping others, making others happy. There were never stories of a different persona behind Annette. She was genuine on screen, as in life.

The original Mouseketeers of the Mickey Mouse Club were only on the air from 1955 to 1960 but their faces are immortal for those who watched the popular TV show. They could all dance and sing and each had a unique personality. One of the best things about the program was that it was educational but the commercials and merchandising that were used to pay for it were not lucrative enough, which was exactly why Disney and ABC could not hammer out a deal and later cancelled it. However, the show did help in part to finance Disneyland.

Annette was the darling of them all. She seemed taller than most of them and was a big sister to the younger ones like, Cubby O'Brien and Karen Pendelton.

The Mouseketeers continued up through 1997 with new children such as Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears who are big stars now, so it goes to show what Disney magic can do.

In interviews in the 90s's Funicello said her eternal friend was Mickey Mouse. Even if Annette retired from entertainment due to her long illness with MS, her passing yesterday evokes one of the newspaper cartoons at the Walt Disney Museum in San Franciscoshowing Mickey crying when Walt Disney passed away in 1966. This cartoon could just as well apply to Annette as one of Mickey's ardent champions.

Listen to an interview of Annette Funicello starting April 10, 10 pm Pacific time in the Movie Magazine Listening Room, a San Francisco based streaming radio program for 20 seasons nationally. The interview will be on there for a week for national and international audiences.